Vegetarian and Low Calorie Recipes: Warnings and Advice

If you are looking for low calorie and vegetarian recipes, you probably have some interest in maintaining your health (or someone else’s health). You might want to feel better, have more energy, look younger, lose weight, or just have a better conscience regarding what is going inside your stomach.

But at the same time, there are some points of advice and even some warnings that I think you should know. I am no doctor or nutritionist. Advice I give is based on what I have read in books, what my mother has taught me, what I have tried, what has succeeded, and what has failed – but most of all, it is based on information borne out by personal experience. Not all bodies are the same. Some of this data may not hold equally true for all. But I believe that, for the most part, these are general rules which apply to most people and will possibly be useful to you.

If you are planning on using low calorie and vegetarian foods I recommend the following:

Don’t starve yourself. When your body goes hungry for too long, the metabolism (the rate at which it burns food) slows down. In other words, the body thinks that since you are going to start starving it, it had better start preserving what food it does get! So the next time you eat, your body will convert more of your food to fat. It is preparing for emergency! That is a general concept my mother taught me and I observed it to be true. When I starved myself and barely ate, I put on more weight than any other time in my life.

Avoid, at all costs, white flower, white rice, and white sugar. These foods are stripped of nutrients. They are just calories. They convert quickly to fat while giving you little benefit in terms of vitamins or nutrients. Furthermore, white flower acts like glue after it enters your stomach. It coats the sides of your intestines. When that happens, nutrients can not pass into the blood easily, and toxins can not get out of your system. Clogging your intestines can wreak havoc in your body and is a prime cause of overweight, disease, and lethargy. Don’t do it.

Avoid cooked potatoes and similar starches. These foods drain your vitality and just help you put on weight. If you have an active lifestyle where you burn lots of calories, you might be able to get away with eating lots of potatoes and starch. But if you have a desk job, forget it.

Eat protein and lots of fruits and vegetables. This has been my Number 1 most successful way of losing weight, ever. Try to have at least 75% vegetables in every meal, with some protein. Eat a minimum of starches.

Find good sources of protein. Some examples are: beans (eat them with brown rice to complete the protein), nuts, soy products, yogurt and dairy products (if you are not a vegan), and seeds.

Drink lots of herbal tea. The nutritional and medicinal benefits of various herbs are enough to fill many large books. Some help you lose weight, some help prevent or remedy illness, some keep you young, some help you sleep, some wake you up, etc. In my opinion, tea also keeps you company and can be a good replacement for “the munchies” if you have them (i.e., the habit of eating out of boredom). Why not keep yourself occupied with something that will help you look and feel young and energetic, instead of something which will make you put on weight?

Get good raw oils. There are lots of them with various benefits – olive oil, coconut oil, this oil, that oil… the important thing is that you get the rawest, purest unrefined oil you can. Read up on the benefits of the different oils, if you wish, and choose the one that is right for you. Use them for salad dressing or whatever else you can think of. If you want to stay healthy and especially if you want to loose weight, you do need to have the proper amounts of good, pure oils.

I have noticed that whenever I started to eat more and more nourishing, healthy foods, I started to become more and more disgusted at the thought of eating junk food and garbage. If you make sure that your body is receiving the nutrients, vitamins, and minerals it needs, you will not crave toxic substitutes. Exercising every day also makes a big difference toward handling any cravings for bad food (in my experience). Don’t get overwhelmed – a little bit of exercise can go a long way. Start with what you can confront and build it up gradually.